[PM to Join] Alive Beneath the Rubble

[Aremu Ediwo]

Early Afternoon, 40 Roalis, 2719
Aminark's Treasures, Old Rose Harbor

Aremu knew better than to say anything to Niccolette about it – about any of it. The house in Quarter Fords was quiet, haunted – the hallways seemed to echo, in a way they never had, before. Aremu had found shards of glass in the dining room, scattered in the edge of a rug, tangled with the thick, heavy fibers. He had knelt, and carefully teased them out one by one, careful fingers finding the bits that didn’t cut. He had not said a word, not about the glass, not about the missing dishes, not about the emptiness of Uzoji’s old study, not about the dark smudges below Niccolette’s eyes and the hollows in her cheeks.

Instead, Aremu had held Niccolette’s hand, carefully, while she sobbed into his shoulder, and taken her slippers off and tucked her into bed when she had worn herself out with the weeping. He was not sure if he should do something with her hair, but in the end he left it a mess on the pillow, hoping she would know how to deal with it when she woke.

Aremu had gone to the small guest room, then, and taken the sheets off the furniture, one by one; he had folded them with his hand, using his arm to hold them in place, and set the pile it made on the desk. He had opened the window, grateful at least that there was no dust, and made the bed himself from the linen closet. Then, and only then, he had set about unpacking, taking clothing and papers and tools from his rucksack, until it was empty and deflated, and could be tucked away in the wardrobe.

Aremu had sat on the bed, then, silent, his hand and his wrist between his legs, his face solemn. She was better off than he had half-expected, better off than he had half-feared. Let her weep, Aremu thought; he could not see any harm. The wet patch on his shirt had dried, by now.

Aremu rolled his right cuff up, slowly and carefully, until it was settled just below his elbow. He took his prosthetic, and set it on his wrist, and he pulled the straps tight, one after another, until they dug, familiar, into his forearm. He sighed, and carefully rolled the sleeve back down to his wrist.

Better the Rose than the empty silence, at least for now, Aremu thought. If she had needed him to stay, he would have; he could have born it. But she was asleep, and Aremu would rather face the busy streets of strangers than the all-too-familiar rubble around him.

Aremu tucked his right hand into his pocket, and made his way out into Quarter Fords. He didn’t walk purposefully, although he didn’t walk slowly either. He wandered; it had been years since he was last in the Rose. It had changed, and yet somehow the totality of the changes seemed to keep it the same. There were familiar restaurants and kofi shops, some old and some new; there were streets with too many memories, and those Aremu avoided without thought, as if his instincts knew to keep him away, as if their very familiarity forbade them.

He wandered out of the Fords, then. He felt the tension rising in his shoulders, a familiar ache; he felt the keen awareness of the crowd, instinctive – that need to know if anyone’s gaze was lingering too long, to check whether he was being followed, to make sure – just – to make sure. He never knew, here in Anaxas; he never knew.

Aremu found the wharf, the Mahogany and the distant skyline; Roalis clouds drifted through it, airships too. For a little while, Aremu sat on a fence and watched the ships rise and fall through the air, as if prodding the wound would make it more bearable. And it did, in time; it stopped hurting, and only then did he rise and go, away, leaving those thoughts behind on the wooden slats. He kept walking, then, and let himself find new side streets – never too far off the main drags, never too distant, even with the weight of his knife against his back, and the gun holstered beneath his shirt. Not here, not in Anaxas.

Aremu saw the bottle kiln from the street, and he made a choice almost without thinking. He could not mend Niccolette’s heart; he could not mend his own. He could not make her home worth living in once more, not this one. But he could, Aremu thought, replace some of the dinnerware she had broken – at least a few more plates and bowls.

The craggy mountained-carved wooden sign above the door read Aminark’s Treasures, and he mouthed the word to himself, quietly, a small frown wrinkling his brow. Gioran, of course; Aremu had studied history at Thul’Amat, as the general curriculum required. He found it an odd name, all the same.

Aremu eased himself into the shop, and glanced around, eyes lingering on the shelves, on the dinnerware in particular. His left hand found his pocket as well; his right wrist rested gently against the seam of the other. “Good afternoon,” he said quietly, almost hesitant, taking another step inside the store.

[Ketziana Dimere]

Aminark's Treasures Old Rose Harbor

on the 40th of Roalis, 2719 Early Afternoon

Ketzi's skills had progressed and she was running a full kiln less often. She had made up the difference in lost sales by renting her kiln out to a small brickmaker that had lost her kiln in a storm. Despite Ketzi's reluctance to warm up to the human, the two women had become friends. Ketzi couldn't help but admit that Dahlia was a warm, joyful woman and Dahlia's friendship had kept Ketzi from sinking into a depression through the too-warm summer and fall. The statuesque blonde had found that her homesickness had been desperately strong as she had sweated and wilted through the summer.

Ketzi hummed as she slowly opened the kiln. It had cooled down finally, and she was eager to see how the wares she had fired had turned out. The pale-skinned woman was still -- always -- experimenting with new techniques and styles and this batch had a specific motif that she had been trying to perfect. Dahlia had dragged her down to the shore one day and, even though Ketzi had bad experiences on the oceans, the delicate woman couldn't help but be enraptured by the color of the ocean and its movements from the safety of the shore. She had been trying to perfect the appearance of soft, rippling water ever since.

Ketzi stepped inside the kiln, picking up the nearest plate gently, a wide, joyful smile blooming on her face. It wasn't a perfect approximation of the ocean, but Ketzi's careful application of color on the plate definitely brought the ocean to mind, and a careful application of a glitter glaze mimicked the sun glinting off the ocean. Ketzi spent the next half hour carefully taking the wares from the kiln out to the display shelves, positioning her prized set so that the slowly setting sun would capture the color graduations best. The rest of the wares were meant for all sorts of price points and ranges of taste.

Once the wares were all placed, the blonde's stomach rumbled, so she headed upstairs to her apartment. Just as she finished taking her first bite of her sandwich, she heard the door open. Swallowing quickly, she yelled. "Be right there!" She placed the sandwich on a plate on the table, glancing at it mournfully for a moment before going downstairs to see her latest client.

"Hello! Welcome to Aminark's Treasures," she said cheerfully to the man standing just within her door. "How can I help you?" she asked as she quickly sized him up. No field, so he was human. She subtly moved towards the plainer of her wares, things that were functional and attractive, but didn't have many embellishments to drive up the price.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Early Afternoon, 40 Roalis, 2719
Aminark's Treasures, Old Rose Harbor

Aremu’s voice had been tentative; not quite loud enough to carry, not far. But all the same, something about his entrance had been noticed; a voice had drifted down the stairs, raised in a yell. He waited, looking around.

The sun was just over its peak, now, and beginning to come down. The light glanced through the window in the shop, and sparkled off something not too distant. Aremu shifted, drawn; he could not have said why, but the piece reminded him of the ocean, the sparkle like the sun on the waves. He went to it, slowly; he was there, he told himself, for Niccolette. But he could not but admire it. He wondered, if he touched it, what he would feel – if it would be porcelain beneath his fingertips, or the rushing of the waves.

Aremu was not close enough to touch, though, and the shop’s proprietor was only a moment away.

“Thank you,” Aremu said, politely, to her greeting. He bowed, a smooth gesture that used both arms, but his hand and wrist were back in his pockets before he finished straightening up, matching bulges inside them once more. His accent was delicate, and lilting, with tones of Cinnamon Hill Thul Ka that, even after so many years, he had not shaken. He was dressed simply enough, in plain pants and a tan linen shirt, long-sleeved, loose, and thick enough not to show more than a hint of his shape beneath.

Aremu glanced around the shop again; he shifted a little more away from the plate he had so admired, and turned his attention instead to the simpler wares. “I am looking for a set of plates and bowls,” he said, looking back at the Gioran woman. It was not in the least a surprise to find a Gioran inside the shop. She was tall, with more than a hand of height between them, but there was distance enough that he could look up easily.

“Perhaps half a dozen of each?” Aremu glanced around, and then frowned, softly, and exhaled. “Ten,” he said, slowly, “if you have something with so many.” He did not go towards the plainest of the pieces of pottery, nor the most delicate; he knew something of the sort of quality that Niccolette preferred, but, too, something of her tendency to smash plates when angry or aching. Perhaps it was not such a surprise that so few remained; he had scarcely had to see her to understand how much she had hurt.

Aremu could not quite help a last glance at the plate on display. He looked at it, once, and settled the sight somewhere inside himself, safe, where nothing could touch it. Then he turned his focus to the task he wished to complete, and did his best to put idle longings aside. He went closer to the shelves, studying them; he doubted Niccolette would care much about color, and he did not know enough to judge one from the next.

“What do you recommend?” He asked, looking at the young woman. He did not smile, not quite, but the slight frown between his brows seemed to lessen, as if he had tried.

[Ketziana Dimere]

Aminark's Treasures Old Rose Harbor

on the 40th of Roalis, 2719 Early Afternoon

Ketzi listened to Aremu attentively, her ears soaking up his accent like a sponge. While the Ketzi who landed in Old Rose Harbor would have found the accent off-putting, a reflection of a world that wasn't properly regimented into its homogeneous groups, the Ketzi that now stood before Aremu had evolved and grown as a person. Her depression was much less of an issue, and her ability to appreciate the artistic beauty in all of nature – even something as mundane as a customer's accent – was at a peak that it would have never reached in her cold homeland. Being forced to interact with people of all races had also opened her mind somewhat, though she still felt that it was in the best interests of the lower races that the galdori remain in power.

Once Aremu had finished speaking, the statuesque passive smiled. "My recommendations would vary depending on your needs. If you have children, you'd probably be better off with a heavier set for daily ware. But if you're shopping for a galdori and they want formal dinnerware, that would require an entirely different set of dishes."

"My sets generally stop at 8 settings, but I do have a couple of sets that have 10 settings," the willowy woman said as she turned and moved over to a set of shelves on the back wall of the sales room. There were 2 dining sets on the wall, one more elaborate than the other. Both were rather thick, the type of dinnerware intended to use for daily meals. The more elaborate set was the green of fresh spring grass, with daisies carved and painted along the edge. The other was a simple, soft blue set with no decoration on it. "I can also do custom work if you'd like. If there's a smaller set you particularly like, I can make a couple extra place settings. Or, if nothing you like fits your tastes, I can make something to your specifications. Of course, custom work costs a bit more than off-the-shelf, but I promise it will be worth it if you have a specific vision for what you want your dinnerware to look like."

[Aremu Ediwo]

Early Afternoon, 40 Roalis, 2719
Aminark's Treasures, Old Rose Harbor

Aremu followed the Gioran proprietor towards the back of the shop. His right arm was still at his side, and his right wrist rested, carefully, on the edge of his pocket, the prosthetic hand a neat bulge within the cloth. It was, by now, an easy habit to keep her on his left even as he drew closer.

The two sets with ten plates were both lovely, Aremu thought, thick and sturdy without looking unduly so. He smiled, just a little, at the green set, studying the daisies. They were lovely, but he thought them very much not Niccolette’s taste; and, too, although both sets were exquisite, the thought of the little painted daisies shattered against the floor the next time the Bastian found her grief could not be contained in her skin and field hurt him a little more than he thought it should. The smile faded, only a brief flickering disruption of his frown after all.

“The blue set, I think.” Aremu said. The color reminded him of the sky more than the ocean, of a clear, cloudless day. He did not quite believe in such things, but he knew sailors and pilots alike who would have called such plates a good omen. He glanced over his shoulder towards the door, unthinkingly, at the plate that had so captured him as he walked in. If this plate was a cloudless sky, he thought, the other was the ocean itself, crashing against the beach.

“I should like to take them soon, if it’s possible,” Aremu said, politely, thinking of the empty shelves back at Niccolette’s house. “As well, I think – if there are any bowls…? Anywhere between six and ten would do, for a set. They need not match exactly,” Aremu did not think Niccolette would be hosting any dinner parties in the near future, “but if they are not displeasing together, that would be greatly appreciated.”

Aremu glanced around the shop once more; once the woman had answered his second, practical question, he would ask. “Did you make all of these pieces yourself?” Aremu asked, thinking of the bottle kiln he had seen from outside. His gaze went once more to the plate by the door; the light outside was just beginning to slant in the early evening hours. It was that plate he looked at, just a moment longer, before he turned back to the Gioran; now he did smile, soft and genuine – not quite a grin, but pleasant, and friendlier, and much easier than before.

“They are beautiful,” The Mugrobi said, quietly, soft and sonorous. He bowed his head lightly; it was not a full bow, this time, and his right wrist stayed comfortably against the edge of his pocket – but it was a gesture of respect, all the same, or so he hoped. The smile faded once more, but it left behind a trace of ease in his expression, a smoothness to his brow and a lightness to the way his lips touched together.